Crypto News: Trump Made $1.4 Billion, Voters Noticed
President Donald Trump reported more than $1.4 billion in income from cryptocurrency ventures last year, according to his annual financial disclosure, and polling shows that most Americans believe he and his family have profited inappropriately from digital assets since his return to power. The crypto news has become a central issue in the final days before the midterm elections, with Democrats using the disclosure to argue that the president has enriched himself from an industry he regulates, and the White House insisting that the president has no conflicts of interest.
The disclosure, filed with the Office of Government Ethics on the standard federal form, runs to nearly 1,000 pages and provides the most detailed picture yet of how much the president and his family have earned from cryptocurrency. The filing shows that the income came from two main channels: token sales and licensing tied to World Liberty Financial, the crypto venture the president and his sons helped to found, and royalty-like income associated with branded meme coins such as $TRUMP. Together, those businesses accounted for nearly all of the disclosed digital asset earnings, and the scale of the income dwarfs what the president earned from his conventional businesses in the same period.
The $1.4 billion figure has been reported by multiple outlets that have parsed the filing, and it has become the headline number in a debate about the intersection of the president’s personal finances and his public duties. The disclosure shows that the president earned more than $600 million from licensing and royalty agreements connected to the $TRUMP memecoin alone, and that World Liberty Financial generated more than $500 million of the reported income. The crypto project focuses on governance tokens and stablecoin products, and it has become one of the most valuable parts of the president’s business empire in less than two years.
Where the $1.4 Billion Came From
The financial disclosure breaks the president’s crypto earnings down into two streams, and the details show how quickly the ventures grew after he returned to office. World Liberty Financial, which the president and his three sons co-founded with the family of Steve Witkoff, generated the largest single share of the income. Reuters, working from the disclosure and from the venture’s own “Gold Paper” prospectus, estimated that the Trump Organization generated about $802 million in crypto income in just the first half of 2025, compared with roughly $62 million from conventional businesses such as real estate and golf in the same period. The contrast between the two figures shows how completely crypto has overtaken the president’s traditional businesses as a source of income.
The $TRUMP memecoin, which the president launched in January 2025, shortly before returning to office, is the second stream. The filing reportedly showed that the president made more than $630 million on the memecoin, through licensing and royalty agreements that pay him a share of the token’s sales and trading. The memecoin’s price has fallen sharply since its launch, dropping by more than 97 per cent from its peak, and CoinGecko data cited in reporting put the token at about $1.70 at the time of publication. The fall in price has not reduced the president’s earnings from the token, because the licensing and royalty income was earned when the token was trading at much higher levels.
The disclosure also shows the scale of the president’s crypto earnings in context. The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg and Axios each highlighted that the president earned roughly $57 million in 2024 from his stake in World Liberty Financial, before the token programme scaled up in 2025. The jump from $57 million in 2024 to more than $1.4 billion in 2025 shows how the ventures grew as the president returned to office and as the crypto market boomed. The president has said that he was in the crypto business before he became president, and that “crypto is a big deal” and the United States is “number one in crypto and AI,” a message he has repeated on social media and in public remarks.
What Voters Think: The Reuters/Ipsos Poll
The disclosure has landed at a moment when voters are paying close attention to the president’s finances, and the polling shows that most of them are not impressed. A Reuters/Ipsos poll found that a majority of Americans believe President Donald Trump and his family have inappropriately profited from cryptocurrency since his return to power, and that his policy decisions are influenced by his private business dealings. The four-day poll found that 63 per cent of respondents said it was inappropriate for the president and his family to have profited in that way, while 32 per cent said it was appropriate and the rest did not answer the question.
The poll’s findings are striking because they cut across party lines. About three in ten Republican respondents called the deals inappropriate, while seven in ten said they were appropriate. Half of the president’s own Republicans believe that the president allows considerations for his business interests to influence his decisions, a striking finding for a leader who pledged to clean up corruption in Washington. The poll suggests that the crypto earnings are not just a Democratic talking point, but an issue that has registered with voters across the political spectrum, including a significant minority of the president’s own supporters.
The Democrats have made the president’s crypto earnings a central part of their midterm campaign. Democrats regularly highlight alleged corruption in the administration ahead of the November midterm elections that will determine control of Congress for the next two years, and the crypto disclosure has given them a concrete set of numbers to point to. Senator Mark Warner released a campaign advertisement highlighting that the president made “more than $600 million alone from the crypto memecoin,” and other Democratic candidates have used the $1.4 billion figure in their own advertising. The administration, meanwhile, has vowed to investigate alleged corruption in Democratic-run states, a response that has not addressed the substance of the crypto earnings.
The Cost to Investors: $4.7 Billion in Losses
The president’s crypto earnings have a second side, and it is the experience of the investors who bought into the ventures. A report by the nonprofit consumer advocacy organisation Public Citizen alleged that the president’s “schemes” cost investors about $4.7 billion, a figure that has been widely cited in coverage of the disclosure. A Reuters investigation found that the president and his sons earned an increase of at least $2.3 billion in the family’s wealth from their main crypto projects, while investors drawn to those projects suffered losses of the same amount. The symmetry of the two figures — the family’s gain and the investors’ loss — has become a central part of the criticism of the president’s crypto ventures.
The $TRUMP memecoin is the clearest example of that pattern. A report based on data from the analytics firm Nansen found that the token’s holders were down $3.8 billion as the token slid, and that the token had fallen by more than 97 per cent from its peak. The filing suggested that all token buyers combined made a net profit of around $200 million, an aggregate figure that contrasts sharply with the large number of losing wallets highlighted by the Nansen analysis. The mismatch points to a detail that investors may overlook: even if the broader market settles slightly positive in aggregate, individual outcomes can still be heavily negative for most holders, because large early wins can dominate the totals even when most holders end up losing money.
Lawsuits, Stablecoins and the Emoluments Clause
The president’s crypto ventures are also the subject of litigation that could shape how the courts view the intersection of his business and his office. A Circle shareholder, Greenberg, who reported holding 10,000 ordinary shares of the stablecoin company, has sued the president, alleging that he violated the Foreign Emoluments Clause of the United States Constitution through his crypto deals. The lawsuit asks the court to declare that the president’s acts were a violation of the Constitution, to enjoin the crypto deals, to order an accounting of the billions in payments from foreign states to the president and his businesses, and to require the companies holding the payments to disgorge the emoluments the president accepted through them.
The lawsuit centres on World Liberty Financial’s USD1 stablecoin, which was used to settle a $2 billion investment in Binance by an entity tied to Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan of the United Arab Emirates. Greenberg alleged that by accepting hundreds of millions of dollars from a foreign government, the president and his companies diverted business from Circle, the company whose shares he holds. A spokesperson for Circle said the company “did not initiate, direct, authorize, or participate in the filing,” and declined to comment on the pending litigation. A spokesperson for World Liberty did not respond to a request for comment.
The White House has dismissed the lawsuit. White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said the president had “no conflicts of interest” with his crypto investments, calling the lawsuit “frivolous.” The administration’s position is that the president’s crypto holdings are managed by outside funds and that he is not personally involved in the day-to-day decisions of the ventures. The lawsuit will test that position in court, and its outcome could have implications for how the president’s business interests are treated for the rest of his term.
Crypto News and the Midterm Elections
The crypto disclosure has become part of a wider debate about the role of digital assets in American politics. The crypto industry has spent about $176 million across more than 100 midterm races, building a bipartisan bloc in Congress that can outlast President Trump, and the industry’s spending is separate from the president’s personal earnings. But the two are linked, because the president’s crypto-friendly policies have been a boon to the industry, and the industry’s spending has helped to elect candidates who support those policies. The disclosure has raised questions about whether the president’s policies are being driven by the public interest or by his private financial stake in the industry.
The midterm elections 2026 will be the first test of whether voters care about the president’s crypto earnings. The Democrats are betting that they do, and that the $1.4 billion figure will be a powerful argument in the final week of the campaign. The White House is betting that voters care more about the economy, immigration and other issues, and that the crypto disclosure will be forgotten by Election Day. The Reuters/Ipsos poll suggests that the Democrats may be right, because a majority of Americans have already formed a view about the president’s crypto profits, and that view is negative.
What Happens Next
The next step is for the courts to decide the lawsuits that have been filed over the president’s crypto ventures, and for voters to decide the midterm elections. The Circle shareholder lawsuit will test whether the president’s crypto deals violate the Foreign Emoluments Clause, and the outcome could require the president to disgorge the payments he has received from foreign states through his crypto businesses. The Democrats’ campaign advertising will continue to highlight the $1.4 billion figure, and the White House will continue to insist that the president has no conflicts of interest.
Either way, the disclosure has changed the debate about the president’s finances. The $1.4 billion in crypto income is now a matter of public record, and the polling shows that voters have noticed. The question for the final week of the campaign is whether that noticing will translate into votes, and whether the president’s crypto earnings will become a defining issue of the midterm elections or a footnote in a campaign dominated by other concerns. The answer will be clear on November 3, when the voters go to the polls and the results are counted.
Source: Mother Jones